The Animal Legal Defense Fund settled a lawsuit filed over widespread animal abuse and neglect at Cal-Cruz Hatcheries, Inc., a Santa Cruz hatchery that processed millions of birds each year destined for the chicken and duck meat industries.

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Cal-Cruz Hatcheries closed down after an investigation by animal rights activists proved animal abuse was rampant and violated the California Business and Professions Code, ALDF spokeswoman Lisa Franzetta said.

The hatchery's owner, Brian Collins, was also banned from being in charge of animals at any business for at least five years.

The lawsuit was filed on Jan. 11 in Santa Cruz Superior Court, and was based on an undercover video filmed by an investigator who worked inside the hatchery.

"Footage revealed horrific abuses including baby birds mutilated on machinery, severely injured hatchlings left to suffer for hours and unwanted chicks sprayed with a high-power hose forcing them into an egg shell disposal chute," Franzetta said. Chicks and ducklings also drowned in buckets of waste and died while stuck inside machinery.

Days after the lawsuit was filed, Whole Foods Market issued a statement that it would no longer purchase chicken from ranches that received hatchlings from Cal-Cruz.

In an interview with KGO-TV, Collins said his employees were desensitized while handling baby birds, and simply saw the operation as a job and income.

“We are happy knowing our lawsuit definitively ensures no more animals will suffer on this factory farm,” says Cheryl Leahy, general counsel at Compassion Over Killing. “Furthermore, this groundbreaking case paves a new way to seek and achieve justice for abused farmed animals.”

Carter Dillard, ALDF’s director of litigation, said, “Let this be a message to factory farmers in California and elsewhere: you are not above the law.”

It's been a great year for feathered fowl in California.

On July 1, a statewide ban will go into effect outlawing foie gras, a culinary delicacy made of fatty duck and goose liver.

The ban is going into effect because the state's only foie gras producer, Sonoma Artisan Foie Gras, failed to come up with a cruelty-free way to fatten the duck's liver after legislatures gave it a seven-year deadline.

Foie gras - French for "fatty liver" - is made from liver swollen to 10 times its normal size. Ducks' livers become so engorged by the feeding process called "gavage" that the birds can't walk and have trouble breathing.